Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Spring/105/Section 56/Julia Rhodes

Overview
Julia Rhodes was a wife and mother to eight children in rural Georgia during the Great Depression. She was interviewed on October 11, 1938 at the age of thirty-five years old.

Biography
Julia Rhodes was born on a farm in Tallapoosa County, Georgia in 1903. Like many women in rural areas in the early 1900s, Julia Rhodes left school and married a 20-year-old man named John when she was only 15 years old. Julia’s first baby was born when she was 16 years old before having another baby every year or two after for a total of 8 children with her husband John. They lived in a ding brown little four-room cottage on a hillside that was surrounded by a grove of trees. Julia was proud of her 8 children, but John found it very difficult to provide for all of them when only one child was old enough to work. John made a decent salary as a weaver, but their overall income was very inadequate, especially without the income of Julia who had to leave her job to take care of the children. Despite all the hardships, Julia did not have a single worry about the future, as the family had pretty good health and she was satisfied.1

Social Issues
Employment

Due to the Great Depression, employment changed a lot for both men and women of all races across the United States. Employees in the 1930s were given reduced hours and salaries and the less fortunate were unemployed. In an effort to support their families during these tough times, many mothers and older children entered the workforce to bring additional income for the family. Even with all these mothers and children entering the workforce, unemployment rates were still at record highs during the Great Depression Era. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were approximately 10,390,000 cases of unemployment in the United States in 1938.2 In addition, according to NBER data, unemployment rates peaked at 25.6% in May of 1933, a value that is still today the highest unemployment rate in U.S. history.3 While employment and a proper income was a challenge for all Americans in the 1930s, it was especially difficult for the rural south and African Americans. Due to pure racism and discrimination, African Americans were the first to be laid off from their jobs and the last to benefit from the charitable organizations that came along with the New Deal. Africans Americans suffered from an unemployment rate two to three times that of whites.4 On the other hand, due to the Dust Bowl in the Midwest and a decline in the iron and steel industries, unemployment rates were higher in the rural south at a constant rate of 25% compared to the national average of about 17% from 1930 to 1945.5

Schooling during the Great Depression

Due to the economic downturn of the decade, schools went through extremely hard times in the 1930s. The value of farm land plummeted, and that meant that property taxes that supported schools fell as well. Without the necessary funding, many school districts in the United States could not pay their own teachers. This led to many children not being able to stay in school because there was not enough funding that was coming in to keep the schools open. However, insufficient funding was not the only issue with schooling in the 1930s. As mentioned in the employment section, many bright children were forced to quit school early in order to work full time to support their family financially. In addition, even the more fortunate students that were able to remain in school struggled to progress due to malnourishment and the lack of clothing, supplies, and textbooks. The situation was even worse for the families living in the Midwest as the Dust Bowl presented specific problems for rural schools. Students were often not able to attend school as school districts were afraid that the children would lose their way during the dust storms.6 Unfortunately, this issue with schooling continued past the era of the Great Depression as many students that had dropped out during the depression found themselves too far behind in their studies and were embarrassed to return to school.

Family Dynamic during the Great Depression

Throughout the early 20th century, women started having kids at a younger age, and the average size of the American family was slowly increasing. The size of these families continued to increase to where it was extremely common for families to have upwards of five children. These large families at the time were very popular because children provided specific economic advantages. This was especially true in farm families in rural parts of the United States where children would start helping on the farm at a very young age. However, during the Great Depression, children became less of an economic advantage for families due to the spread of industrialization to rural parts of the United States. In addition, more and more women were entering the workforce in an attempt to support their families financially. This meant that women during the depression had less time to raise multiple children and if a woman did have a family to raise, it was a financial burden for the family. Therefore, the average family size significantly declined during the Great Depression to approximately 2.1 children per family.7